There has been a paucity of research exploring how best to communicate cancer risk information, and how this information affects risk perception accuracy, behavioral change, and informed decision-making about precautionary health behaviors. The risk core will be uniquely suited to examine these issues in an experimental environment that will be of fundamental importance to the construction of efficient and effective intervention materials among program projects. The benefits of the risk core to the program projects include: 1) the flexibility to test ideas via different methodologies (e.g., laboratory studies, focus groups, etc.) needed by projects in a timely manner, 2) being responsive to the needs of projects as they emerge, 3) testing ideas before they are implemented among projects hence saving the time, efforts, and costs related to duplication of efforts among independent ~searchers, along with the added advantage of developing further ideas that show promising results in the lab as intervention strategies, 4) using methodologies that maintain experimental control, and 5) being the central arena for the integration and dissemination of information allowing for greater synergy among projects. For these reasons, the risk core is a necessary component of the CPRU with advantages that outweigh the implementation of separate small population studies and analyses of preexisting data sets.